Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/193

174 the Hindoo finds, then, positively sure, is that ''Nothing can be real that is independent of the Knower''. Here is indeed the centre, the moving principle, of this entire dialectical process which the sages of the Upanishads remorselessly pursue. The only alternative to their own view of Being that is known to them is simply Realism. But simple Realism they see to be self-contradictory, and so absurd. The truth cannot then be independent of the Knower. But if not independent of the Knower, and yet if not given to him by his finite experience and thought, what can the truth be except what one approaches, within one’s own very heart, when one gradually casts off finitude, and wins unity and peace.

The process of accomplishing this end proves to consist of a series of stages whose terms lose finite definition and expressible qualities the farther you proceed in the series. The limit of this series of stages of purification and of simplification of life appears to the restless finite creature as zero. But, as the Hindoo now with assurance insists, this zero must be also the Absolute, the One sole Being, and must be so precisely because, even as the limit of the series, it is also the goal of the process, the wished for home of the soul, the expected object of perfect knowledge, — in brief, the Attainment. Now this contrast-effect, and this alone, gives the zero, that is the limit of the finite process, its value, its truth, its absoluteness. And if you waver at the gate of this heaven, half minded to turn back to error and to transmigration, wondering whether there be any true glory within, the Hindoo, reminding you of the hopelessness of every realistic definition of truth, and of the failure